Clair Bros.’ crew makes sure sound is everywhere on The Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd’s dark, introspective music, combined with their bleak world view, made for powerful, if somewhat depressing songs — especially as Roger Waters took more creative control of the band in the late ’70s and early ‘80s. So I was caught a little off-guard when I spoke to the crew of the Roger Waters Dark Side of the Moon tour, and every single person referred to the tour as “Happyville” — and no one was joking. Bob Weibel, the tour’s systems engineer, didn’t want to tell me too much about the gags in the show because he “didn’t want to ruin the fun.” I guess when you’re touring with a rock legend and making him sound amazing you can afford a little levity.
FOH: So what are you running here?
Bob Weibel: It’s pretty straightforward. The P.A. is our current flagship touring configuration, 14 i4s in the front P.A. and eight i4s on each side. The surround system is three clusters of 12 of the Clair R-4s, each of which contains an 18, a 12 and a horn. Each cluster is designed to radiate 360 degrees horizontal, and very nearly 90 degrees vertical.
Trying to do surround is really challenging in the live environment, just because the geometry of it dictates that you can’t make it perfect for every seat, and we needed a solution that we can actually put up and take down in a day. So this has evolved over the course of a couple of tours and works pretty well. We never try to actually create a home-theatre style 5.1, where you’re sitting in the middle of a band. That’s not what this is intended to be. This is playback of prerecorded sound effects primarily, and there are a couple places where there are instrumental or effects solos that will pan through and move around. You’ll hear a vocal solo in the surround at one point. It has really big, long echoes, so the solo is coming from the mains, and then the echoes pan from different surround positions, and some of the instrumental solos are similar.
But the idea is not home theatre. The idea is, the band is in the front left and right, and at various points, you’ll hear things pan from side to side or from front to back. You’ll hear things move around you, or you’ll hear all the surrounds fire off at once to basically create an ambient sound, so that you really hear it move from being a stereo image in front of you to just all of a sudden, it’s everywhere, and then you’ll feel it pull back.
How much of the sound design is from the late ‘70s, and how much was rethought for this tour?
Well, I’ve been working with Roger since ’98, when he started up his American tours again, and conceptually, it’s been the same since then. We’ve gone through and cleaned up a lot of the source material, particularly for this tour.
Has the gear changed over the course of the tour?
Whenever we’re in a market with one of our affiliates, let’s say Jand’s in Australia or Clair Japan or Clair Europe, we’ll use our own gear when we tour. In other parts of the world, we have done a lot of pickup festivals and one-off shows using local gear. Basically, we were flying around the world with two tractor-trailers worth of gear and doing local stacks and racks. We would carry the bare-bones of sound, lighting, projection and band gear and pick up the entire rest of the production as we went. Once we started a proper European tour, carrying our own production, then we were in 11 trucks. We’re in nine trucks here in America.
How did you manage with only two trucks?
It’s really all about the advance. Making sure that the local vendors understand your requirements, making sure that you understand what they’re proposing, and doing it far enough in advance that, if they’re just not in line with something you need, you can really hold their feet to the fire. You can’t make that work at the last minute. You’ve got to be doing this months or weeks in advance: e-mails and calling them on the phone. Trip Khalaf, who’s mixing at front of house, is a really skilled engineer and has been able to adapt to all the different rigs we’ve used. With a few very limited exceptions, we’ve been able to make lots of different rigs sound good.
What kind of tools are you using to tune the system to the room?
We’ve got the Clair I/O software set up on the primary tablet PC, and both SIA SMAART and a MIDI program change program running on the backup tablet. The I/O stuff is control software for our crossovers. There’s no analysis component of that. This setup allows Trip to use the backup tablet to change presets on both consoles and his effects with a single mouse click. Now, one of the cool parts is, SMAART runs in the background on this machine, and there’s an additional software component you can buy from Lake that will take the screen display from SMAART and move it across the network and display it simultaneously with your filters, so in any of your filter pages on the I/O software, you can have all of your SMAART controls, it’ll do all the different displays, and you can change all the properties. Pretty much anything you can do on the SIA stuff, you can control from here. It’s mighty handy, actually.
To be able to superimpose the filters that you’re doing with the system response, with the RTA display, you see it in real time; it’s actually kind of cool. And very handy. And that component will still continue to work even when that tablet is undocked and wirelessly getting dragged around, so you can walk around, work on different parts of the rig, and still see what that analysis microphone is doing.
What kind of gear is Trip using at front of house?
The band gets mixed on the Midas XL4. The Yamaha PM5D does the surround playback and effects returns. Earlier on in the tour, Nick Mason, Floyd’s drummer, would join us for a couple of shows, so his drum kit was on the 5D. Our little world out here is pretty straightforward and self-contained. You can see from the selection of inserts and effects — it’s all classic stuff, the good stuff. Aphex gates, Lexicon 480 for the reverbs, H-3500 for the harmonizer. That Cranesong limiter is a particular favorite of Trip’s for bass guitars, so it really dovetails into this.
Anything else we need to know?
This is happyville. We have a great touring unit, I’m very satisfied with my crew, I’m very satisfied with working with all the other departments, everyone has a really positive, cooperative attitude. Production Manager Chris Kansy and Aimee Moreau are real pleasures to work with. It’s a great show. It really is. A really satisfying production to be involved in.
Across the Pond in Monitor World
Robin Fox has been with Roger Waters since the Floyd days, having met him at Brittannia Row in the mid-70s. He’s got his hands full doing different mixes for PMs and wedges for different band members, not to mention flying in the surround cues to keep the performers on track with the video and surround gags. It’s a lot to keep up with, especially since Roger’s been asking for this since the ‘70s.
Robin Fox: It’s almost as if technology’s trying to keep up with his ideas. That’s how I feel sometimes. And he’s very hands-on. He knows what he wants, which is very good, ‘cause there’s no gray area with us. Anything’s possible that’s possible. Though you tell him it’s going to take a sec. It’s something to be demanding. The level of expectation is very high.
Can you give me an example?
No, you’ll just misquote me! [Laughs.]
So is he on personal monitors or wedges?
Both. His vocal and his acoustic guitar are his main reinforcement in front of him, and there’s a band mix in front of him as well, and we do have a lot of quad effects, just little stuff that flies around in the room and pops. And for them to appear at the right time, there has to be a certain amount of cueing, you have to know that you’re in on one, otherwise, you’ll sound really odd.
He has an earpiece, and I have to put his vocal in his ear, otherwise it’s a bit like walking down the street with one suitcase. So I try and redress the balance of having his ear closed, and he gets a little cue — whatever it might be — like a piano, so he knows where he is in the song as he goes through. Some of the timings and the time sequences in the songs really move dramatically, and some of the other lads need cues as well for their solos, just so that everybody hits it exact, you know, you’re doing a quick tune and you get your little cue — solo on four — and you come out of tune, and you’re ready. It’s just that little pickup so you really hit, so everybody’s got a little earpiece.
The girls have PMs and wedges as well, and that means they can have their voices really right in their faces, hear it in their heads and have the band ambient all around. It makes it spatial and it means they’re never more volume than the next person. It’s not the guitarist struggling against the vocalist, struggling against the keyboard player. Also, with wedges you walk around on the stage, you can place the instrument or the voice spatially. You can hear the girls as a section over here, or you can hear the two guitarists; you hear one solo, or the second solo…it’s a very comfortable environment for them to be creative in, so that’s what we try and do. We’ve got 16 channels of different mixes and information going out.
Sounds like you’ve got a lot going on.
It’s always been that way with Roger. As I said, it’s almost like technology’s trying to catch up. Finally we’ve got digital consoles so he can really, really fly with it now, and that’s what he’s doing. This DiGiCo D5 has a little footprint, but I’m using all — it’s 116-input. Actually, it’s probably more than that, because some drop in and out. If the second drum kit isn’t being used, something else can drop in, the rotor toms for one song and overheads for another, acoustic guitar in one, and it’s a sax effect in another song — things like that.
The D5 is really intuitive. The controls are very economically laid out. It’s right in front of you. With the four screens, it means you spend less time looking at the console, more time looking at the band, which is what you should be doing. It’s like the Formula One of the digital consoles, a Ferrari if you like, of the digital consoles. It really flies. And I know a lot of people who bitch a little bit, but it’s like, if you drive a Ferrari at a brick wall, you’re going to break it. If you don’t do that, you’re fine. Just keep the Ferrari away from the brick wall.
We’ve been flying this around the world — five continents — and we’ve been out 14 months, by the time we go home, and the only problem in this is that one of the stage hands got a bit rough and broke a light. It’s always been that bitching about “Oh, I heard this story where . . . ” If you’re going to break it, you’ll break anything. But if you want that bit extra, if you want that intuitive feel, if you want to go just that little bit faster, then you need something to fly with you, and that’s what the DiGiCo does. The other consoles will just, “Ohhh, wait a minute — you sure you want to do that?” Or, “Oh, no, you have to do it this way.” You can’t just touch the screen.
Crew
FOH Mixer/Tour Mgr.: James “Trip” Khalaf III
System Engineer: Robert Weibel
Monitor Mixer: Robin Fox
Monitor System Engineer: Richard Schoenadel
Techs: Hank Fury, Don Baker
Production Manager: Chris Kansy
Gear
FOH
12 Clair I-4, 2.5°
8 Clair I-4, 5°
28 Clair I-4, 10°
36 Clair I-4B
36 Clair R-4 SERIES III
4 HL-15
8 Clair FF-2H
1 Midas XL4
1 Yamaha PM5D-RH, 48 Input
14 Clair Bros. Audio iO
2 Lexicon 480L
2 Yamaha SPX-1000
1 Eventide H3000
4 Aphex 622
1 Cranesong STC-8
2 dbx 160SL
1 dbx 902
7 dbx 903
1 dbx 900A FRAME, 9-SLOT FRAME
1 TC Electronic D-TWO
MON
1 DiGiCo D5
2 DiGiCo D5 stage racks
12 12AM II
1 ML-18
4 Crown/Clair iO amp racks
3 Shure U1-UA
3 Shure U2-UA
3 Shure Beta 87C
24 Sennheiser EK 300
8 Stewart PA-100BX1
12 Sennheiser SR 300
3 dbx 160SL
2 Brooke Siren DPR-402
1 TC Electronic 1128
6 Yamaha SPX-990
1 Klark Teknik DN6000
2 TC Electronic M3000
1 TC Electronic MM24
18 TC Electronic 1128
4 Shure Beta 52
14 Shure Beta 98
10 Shure SM57
6 Milab DC96B
4 AKG 460
10 Shure Beta 87C
8 Audio-Technica AT4050
3 Shure SM81
2 Beyer M88
2 Crown PZM
1 Crown PZM 30-D
2 Shure SM91
24 Countryman DI Box
6 ISO-BOX, CBA, X-10
5 Beyer Opus 87
4 Sennheiser MD-421
